Knockout
by piratesmiley
Summary: "She was the damn Louvre and her head was filled with reality and impossibility and puzzles and rawness." A/A.


A/N: I love this movie. I love this pairing. Here is the happy result.

Spoilers for the entire movie.

Disclaimer: I don't own Inception. Not even a little.

* * *

She was interesting.

It wasn't just a matter of talent, although that was the catalyst in this quick, but hopefully benign, little Pandora's box. She was a natural architect, honest-to-whatever, and lucky as it was that Cobb found her – it was even more lucky, or rare, more aptly, that he got to see it himself, up close, just her and him.

A knockout. She was the damn Louvre and her head was filled with reality and impossibility and puzzles and rawness. The best.

Smitten by her talent.

* * *

She looked incredibly fragile, tiny and pretty and trusting.

His first instinct, after waking her up for the first time, after seeing her panic but not the cause, was to teach her how to shoot a gun. Maybe if she knew – if she went in armed and able to protect herself, she could feel more comfortable against people who actually knew how to fight against them.

Later he figured out what he really wanted was to protect her himself. But he woke up from the fifties and a couple of days after their initial meeting he gifted upon her baby's first pistol.

She took it, half-confused and half-complacent, and smiled.

* * *

He liked being able to teach her something. Penrose staircases – to amaze her. And then to see the product: the wheels spinning in her head, her hands twitching for a pen, her unfocused eyes as she planned out things he could only hope to see one day.

And he really did hope.

* * *

There was a perception that he was clean, neat, polite.

This was largely correct.

On occasion, at moments appropriately inappropriate, he could be messy.

_Quick, give me a kiss._

That could have been messy. Not that he didn't know what he was doing. But he'd run in with a few nasty projections in his day, and they reacted to the weirdest of things.

Still. It really was worth a shot.

Quick and sweet. No fuss. She turned away from him in shock, but he just sat, smiling.

* * *

It wasn't supposed to mean much. They shared oxygen, they swam to the surface, they climbed up onto the rocks and waited.

He watched her, wet and shivering.

She wasn't worried. That should have worried him even more, but it didn't. She had seen what, or rather who, haunts Cobb. She trusted him, perhaps blindly, foolishly.

But Arthur, just this once, could blindly, foolishly trust her.

* * *

So maybe it was a little more than diversion tactics. Maybe, that first night in Los Angeles, where he chose a motel because he wanted the clarity that came with the solitude, he thought about it all night. He thought about her lips, her eyes, her expression. Her mind. Her infinite capabilities. Possibilities. Maybe he thought about her until he fell asleep to a conversation they had about how she got her name – a parent obsessed with Greek lore. Which then shifted to life stateside, her childhood, her hobbies. He catalogued every detail until he fell unconscious.

And maybe, for the first time in a while, he dreamed.

* * *

He met her for drinks the night before she got on a plane back to Paris.

One last hurrah.

She looked lovely, perfect, happy. Except for her eyes. They were restless and searching and waiting for something to happen. He watched her in confusion.

"So do you have any other jobs lined up?"

_Ah._

So she wanted to go under again.

He took a long time to answer. "No," he said, and it wasn't a lie. But he didn't want to make her think that he could pull her back in with good conscience. He wasn't Cobb, and he didn't want to turn into him, and he didn't want Ariadne to turn into him, and most of all, he didn't want them to end up like Mal and Cobb.

But he knew she wouldn't stay away. Word would get out among people of their kind that she's the new best Architect in the business. Others would offer her jobs if he didn't.

He watched her face drop just a tiny bit.

He leaned forward and shrugged noncommittally. "Something will come along."

She nodded, and he watched the wheels spin again. She fingered her totem, knocking it over on the bar a few times. When she noticed him looking, she smiled shyly.

"It's hard to know what's real anymore."

"This is real," he offered.

She smiled widely.

"I'm glad."


End file.
